But don’t you dare mention the e or @ or heaven forbid the dreaded x, because accomodating identities not traditionally considered in a language’s common form is “white people shit”
Every single American born person of hispanic heritage, every first gen Spanish speaking immigrant I have ever known or met, as a friend, momentary acquaintance, or as a social worker helping to aid the homeless…
…every one that I have met in the real world either thinks latinx is laughably stupid (as in they literally laugh when the topic is brought up), or they are visibly confused when they read or hear the term.
And of friends and acquaintances, I know they ranged all over the political spectrum.
I wish no ill will on whoever came up with the term, but it just is not sensible to anyone who is not terminally online.
Hablo un pocquito español, so… as far as I can tell, there is at least existing precedent for the e ending, but I’ll leave it up to the actual members of the language group and its culture to come up with a term (hell, there may be many different local or regional ways to accomplish it, as Spanish varies considerably by region and locale).
Actual members of the language group and culture did come up with a term, they came up with the x, and the anti-queer-machismo undercurrent in Latine society drove the lot to hysterics about the end of the spanish language and the gringoification of Latine culture.
Every time I see someone try to excuse this shit they’ll spin some variant of “let them decide what term to use”, and I’m like, why isn’t the same right afforded to the queer folks who came up with those terms?
What about the greater Latine culture gives them a superior right to the Latine queer community to decide what letter to use? Why is not listening to the language community in question suddenly ok when it means overriding what the Latin Queer community outright told y’all they wanted in favor of appeasing los machismos who are all suddenly heads of the spanish academy and grammar experts as soon as it’s convenient to be so to shout down some gay math nerds who wanted to be clever and punny in their chatspeak representation?
The Anglosphere didn’t have the right to tell our queer community what they were gonna be called, why should we respect the hispanosphere trying to say they have that right?
Look, if someone wants to identify as latinx, I’m not going to stop them, and I will use that term in reference to them, no problem.
If the term was, as you say, invented by gay latinx math nerds in chat rooms then sure, it works for them on internet chatrooms or in the real.
There does seem to be significant contention as to where and how the term arose, as well as its usage, and that’s from LGTBQ writers, activists and academics.
Some are for it, some are against it, and its not just because of machismo. I’m seeing a whole bunch of articles from a quick search of people writing arguments against latinx from differing perspectives such as X is a product of settler colonialism, it erases blackness, it erases femicides, etc etc, and again this is coming from LGBTQ magazines.
My point was that in practical usage, specifically when serving in a non profit assisting the homeless, the term is a point of confusion, and more generally, it is basically an online term that works when written, but not when spoken.
Sure, if you grew up knowing English you can probably pronounce it, but a Spanish only speaker usually looks at the word and thinks it is a misspelling, as generally latinx does not result in an easily pronounceable sound following Spanish pronunciation rules.
The only similar analogy I can think of in English is the rainbow of pronouns invented by Tumblr.
I have no problem calling a NB person ‘they/them’.
But when it gets to things like xer/xem or bun/buns or fae/faer or some of the other, wackier pronouns I’ve seen… its often words that are very awkward to say aloud, and they just seem ridiculous.
Are you sure it was actually created in the Latin American world by Spanish speakers and not in the USA by English speakers with Mexican ancestors that keep saying they’re Mexican even though they’ve never been to the country, can’t speak the language and the last person in the family to do so was their grandpa?
Because this seems 100% an American invention by people who can’t speak the language but still need to feel superior by pretending to do “something” for the queer community.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of this outside of English speaking forums comprised mainly of Americans. Not in real life, not in Europe, not in Latin America.
Do you even speak the language? Because I’d argue that before trying to change something, you first need to have a deep understanding of that thing, especially for languages.
It was meant as a text only placeholder and the poor enbie math nerd who came up with it is probably traumatized for life because of the machismo fuckasses that made hating it their entire reason to be.
Because we don’t want non-speakers rewriting the grammar of our language based on sensitivities that are not ours.
“non-speakers”, “not ours” as if you have any right to decide or judge.
Clinging for dear life to “it’s not disgusting bigotry! ItS jUsT oUr CuLtUrE!”, unless you’re out here admitting you have the weakest spine on the planet and immediately turn with the social winds, how other people speak a language ain’t gonna change how you speak it.
Only way you could ever accuse it of harming latin culture is if you fundamentally believe being inclusive to queer folks is destructive, in which case, you are literally the exact low-down slime I was warning about in this whole thread, and I welcome you to the stage as the freakshow example you deserve to be seen as!
Hey friend, cool back a few notches maybe.
I’m cishet, but I consider myself an ally of the community.
That said, the Latinx shit is dumb. Do you speak any Spanish or can you use an accent? Latinx is unpronounceable in Spanish. That’s why people of that racial grouping say that it’s some bullshit. It is bullshit.
My friends and coworkers from Mexico, Central, and South America prefer Latino, Latina, or even, believe it or not, Spanish. Gender neutral!
One of my professional mentors is from Nicaragua. He lives in the US, calls himself by an anglicized first name, and when people ask where he’s from he says he’s Mexican. Granted he’s older and he’s just trying to get by. He doesn’t give a fuck about any of this identity stuff. I’m not saying people should emulate him, just giving a silly example.
Trying to impose your value judgement on a culture you don’t know or don’t understand. Acting like a true colonizer. I’m a queer Hispanic, I don’t need you carrying out a moral crusade in my name.
The e is really used (at least in Mexico) The @ was used in my times (millennial) but it was mostly to avoid writing twice: niños y niñas -> niñ@s but the e really incorporates a neutral plural
x I’ve only seen it from corporations and white people
Might have seen more of it if y’all stopped being allies with the bigots who terrorized the latine folks that came up with it into silence.
Seriously, the “inclusivity is white people shit” is so strong even queer PoC have internalized it to the point of trying to justify the absolute vitriol a single letter got that “just happened” to be one queer latine folks came up with to represent themselves.
Oh noooo don’t tell the shitlibs or they’ll start calling it no binarix XD
i know that every time ‘latinx’ comes up online it gets spammed with ‘rich white libs made it up’ replies but i’ve also seen deep in those comment chains people claiming to be latin american trans people and that the term was created by the latin american trans community itself.
also, typically those replying with the above knee jerk ‘white libs’ response tend to be far right when i dug into their histories. on youtube and reddit over the years, that is. haven’t seen this discourse on lemmy. also i don’t have any sources for the origin of the term, just thought you might want to reconsider potentially being hateful to the latin american trans community if that wasn’t your intention.
and tbh, even if it was some dem focus group in new york that came up with it, it’s pretty easy to see that trans people might take the above kind of response to that term as one rooted in hatred.
I am both latine and trans and latinx is fucking dumb lol so heres another one for the anecdote
my understanding is latinx and latine are pronounced exactly the same, just different spelling. you’re using latine while saying latinx is dumb and made up by shitlibs?
Gendered languages are quite confounding; one day I hope those languages become more accommodating to those who realized they didn’t identify with a gender and threw it away. Or worse, got their gender pickpocketed in a seedy part of town, because some tossers were quite desperate!
It’s just one more thing to memorize when trying to learn them. I’m not going to intuitively know what gender a chair is…
I’ve asked the following question before and I’ve never gotten a good answer - why do the words need a gendered suffix at all? Why can’t the final O and A letters simply be omitted from all words that aren’t inherently gendered? Like the word for library is 'bibliotheca", so why can’t it just be called “bibliothec”?
The long and short of it is that it was decided on however long ago and now the people who learn the language growing up are used to it and they decide the rules that are followed.
English (and any non-native language) does many weird things that native speakers are just used to and will get upset if you try and change it.
I think the answer to every “Why doesn’t this language work like this” question is “because it doesn’t work like that”.
Also since the definite articles (e.g “the”) is just the vowels, you lose them entirely. And words would just sound weird cause it would create sounds that don’t really exist in the languages
Jokes aside, I think the correct one should be “binaria” because it’s “persona no-binaria”, where “persona” being a female-gendered word still includes everybody (persono doesn’t even exist).
Really, if you replace “gender of the person” to “gender of the noun”, ChatGPT is correct.
It’s people who can be little more picky about pronouns and stuff
Precisely. It is “el género no binario” or “la persona no binaria”. It has nothing to do with the person, just the nouns. As “binario/a” is an adjective, it has no gender on its own.
This legitimately trips up learners. How if the noun is female, it’s correct to use feminine articles/pronouns/etc regardless of the person’s gender, even if you know they’re male. (or vice-versa).
That and plurals defaulting to male.
And if the noun is a person’s name? Then how do you determine whether to use the masculine or feminine version of non-binary?
Native speaker here and no, that wouldn’t be correct as a general rule. The most typical would be talking about or someone else like “yo soy no binario/a” and “yo” would be a he or a she depending on who is saying that. If you’re talking about someone else it’s “el/ella es no binario/a” for example.
Also a native speaker here. You can also just not specify “el/Ella” because the context isn’t relevant. I.e. “es no binaria”. You can also just pluralize the person to get around gendered wording, I.e. “ya llegaron” for “they have arrived” rather than “el/Ella ya llego” for he/she has arrived, but this is informal and may sound odd to someone of a different dialect from me, but I think this should at least be intelligible to Latin american Spanish dialects
The point of being non-binary, though, is that they are neither “he” nor “she”. Hence the post.
no binario or binaria or maybe binarioa or binari or binarie
but please not binarix
…Latino, Latina, Latinx community…
-NPR
(Actually can make sense when you include all three cuz enby)
Here in Argentina, we tend to use the “e” ltter at the end. To be fair, only people who use what we call inclusive language use it. It ends up being “no-binarie” which makes more sense.
“We” as in the minority of people. “Inclusive language” in spanish is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in the past few years and it’s (thankfully) not very widespread.
Yeah then they would claim it was made by latin alphabet people
It’s just a thinly veiled try to appropriate our Spanish language
No binarie el compañere.
EDIT: la compañere? Shit, back to square one.
Le compañere? Maybe. Articles in Spanish are rigidly male or female, the gender sometimes determines the difference between identical words.
El radio: the metal radium / La radio: the radio (AM, FM, shortwave, etc.)
El cometa: the comet / La cometa: the kite
